g6 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 10/ 



Board not only assisted in orientation but made positive contributions 

 of facts and materials. The numerous letters of appreciation from 

 officials of the armed services are convincing testimonials in themselves 

 (see Appendix A for samples). The liaison officers were enthusiastic 

 in their praise, A Military Intelligence report on eight Washington 

 agencies and their potentialities states: "Of the agencies contacted, 

 the Ethnogeographic Board is the most important for MID and 

 greater use should be made of its services." In fact, everyone, who has 

 had occasion to review this service, has agreed on its merits. 



Various reasons for this success have already been mentioned in 

 the discussion of particular topics. The service was open to all agen- 

 cies, with no restrictions placed on the rank of the requester or on the 

 validity of his question, provided it fell within the Board's wide field 

 of competence. The members of the staff were of high caliber and 

 familiar with area problems. Questions received rapid, carefully eval- 

 uated answers and were frequently followed up with additional infor- 

 mation. The Board had good local sources of information, principally 

 the Smithsonian Institution and its staff, and could theoretically tap 

 the academic resources of the country. 



In fact, the Ethnogeographic Board referred to itself as a clearing- 

 house between the Government and scholarly institutions. This it 

 might well have been if it had not forgotten that a clearinghouse oper- 

 ates in two directions. The Board, however, received requests only 

 from the Government and was seldom forced to seek answers from 

 sources outside of Washington itself. Instead of a clearinghouse, the 

 organization could be described as a loan, from the Sponsors, of the 

 services of four to five professional anthropologists (the staff) plus 

 a group of advisers (the Board) to the military departments. 



This might seem too limited a judgment, but certainly the ideal chart 

 which the Ethnogeographic Board included in its brochure could be 

 simplified. Instead of feeding all agencies of Government with knowl- 

 edge from the country's academic institutions, most requests came from 

 the War and Navy Departments, and most answers, outside of those 

 furnished by the staff itself, came from the National Research Council, 

 the American Council of Learned Societies, and the Smithsonian in 

 Washington, and mainly from Yale outside of that city. 



The Board's pragmatic definition of service, valuable as it was 

 at the beginning, was too limited. By the end of the first year and a 

 half, the requests for spot information were markedly reduced. Orien- 

 tation, or at least an adulterated substitute therefor, had been achieved. 

 The wealthy, heavily staffed Government agencies caught up to the 

 Board once they got organized. In the long run they were better 



